A Progressive Duck's take on Politics, Media, History, Rock and Roll and whatever else I feel like quacking about

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Attorney's and Corruption

Paul Krugman raises a good question, and i was very happy to hear Chuck Schumer make the same point today during the Judiciary Committee hearing. What about the ones not fired? For instance,

[T]he subpoenas that Chris Christie, the former Bush “Pioneer” who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, issued two months before the 2006 election — and the way news of the subpoenas was quickly leaked to local news media.

The subpoenas were issued in connection with allegations of corruption on the part of Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who seemed to be facing a close race at the time. Those allegations appeared, on their face, to be convoluted and unconvincing, and Mr. Menendez claimed that both the investigation and the leaks were politically motivated.

Then there's this piece from New Mexico regarding a local Democratic scandal involving courthouse construction. Here's the key line in the article, after all the Rove involvement is discussed: The courthouse controversy has yet to yield indictments.

We've all heard about this study that out of 375 investigations, 298 involved Democrats. Seeing as how there's some rough parity of elected officials party affiliation across the country, you would figure the numbers would be more like 200 GOP and 150 Dem and the rest others, but then you wouldn't be thinking about who's involved here. Karl Rove, Mr politics is policy.

I have to hand it to the committee today, Schumer made that point, Feinstein made some good points about the obvious politization involved here, and she countered when that jackass Kyl threw in the Clinton fired all 93 US Attorney's canard. And I have to question that based on this article from Minnesota Public Radio, (my bolds) to wit:

Tom Heffelfinger resigned his post as U.S. attorney in Minneapolis last February. He had served two stints -- the first from September 1991 to April 1993, and then again from September 2001 to February 2006. President Clinton took office in January of 1993, so there's one USA he didn't fire, it would appear. I'll bet there's others who they asked for and received resignations from, but who then stayed for a while until replacements were found. After 12 years of Reagan and Bush you know damn well they needed replacing by Democrats, that's just too long for one party to control their positions, especially given the corruption and cronyism, a pale spectre of Bush/Cheney's but present nonetheless, of Reagan and his Spymaster Bush.

Somebody at TPM Muckraker said that Abu would resign and that would be the end of it. But I say no. Perjury is a felony regardless of your employment status, and there are too many threads of corruption running around this issue to be satisfied by the scalp of that wretched little man Gonzales. Not that he's ever going to talk, he knows what would happen to him if he did, there'd be no spider hole deep enough for him to hide in, but putting the squeeze on him and his wretched flunkies is bound to achieve results. Hey, it worked for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, right, it oughta work for Abu G.